


the ocean burned

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Series: SASO 2017 [25]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Challenge: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics | SASO 2017, M/M, barcelona
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 15:56:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11581326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: So: five years, and Otabek, one step ahead, keeps his heart clenched tight in his fist, the better to give to Yuri willingly instead.In Barcelona, the water is on fire and even your tears are hot.





	the ocean burned

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SASO 2017 Bonus Round 4: Quotes | [originally posted here](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/23665.html?thread=14418545#cmt14418545)
> 
> “His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he'd let them overflow and now there wasn't a damn place in the ocean that wouldn't catch fire if he dropped a match.”   
> “Adam smiled cheerily. Ronan would start wars and burn cities for that true smile, elastic and amiable.”   
> ― Maggie Stiefvater, _The Raven King_

Yuri Plisetsky on the ice is a wraith. He is merciless and breathtaking and everything you cannot take your eyes off even as you never quite manage to pin him down, and Otabek has grown used to that. He is  _fey_ : when others say it, they mean Yuri is beautiful; when Otabek hears others say it, he understands Yuri is a thing that will reach into his chest, take out his heart and leave it in the snow somewhere.   
  
Not because he intends to hurt Otabek. He is far too guileless for that. Only because, in Yuri’s view of the world, that is where it will be safe everlasting, tucked away tenderly until the flowers grow in winter.   
  
So: five years, and Otabek, one step ahead, keeps his heart clenched tight in his fist, the better to give to Yuri willingly instead.  
  
In Barcelona, the water is on fire and even your tears are hot. There is a moment, after their performance in the exhibition skate, when Yuri finds Otabek backstage and throws his arms around him. There is no more elegance in the gesture. His eyes are alight, his cheeks flushed, and he is spent, his breath coming fast and heavy in a quiet space.   
  
 _Did you see me?_  Yuri asks.  
  
He is not asking if Otabek watched. Obviously he watched. He is asking, Otabek knows, if he  _saw_.   
  
 _Yes,_  says Otabek.   
  
When he lets go, it’s without regret, without hesitation. Yuri is not something to be contained in an embrace. It doesn’t take Yakov long to come storming down the aisle in search of his wayward charge, and as they leave, Yuri flashes him one last triumphant grin over his shoulder.   
  
His hair is loose now, that artful half-updo coming undone. He has not bothered to remove his eyeliner. There’s a smear down his cheek that Yuri either hasn’t noticed, or doesn’t care to; perhaps both. He’s a glorious mess. He has never looked more achingly real.  
  
 _Are you human, or are you not?_  
  
That was the question in Otabek’s mind, when he first saw Yuri Plisetsky grace the barre. He had chosen, then, to believe that something more throbbed inside, that the casual cruelties of boyhood would be thawed away, in the end. He never thought Yuri too young to be a soldier. In truth, it was the other way round: he was too young not to be, not to see the world as a black-and-white battlefield. Kindness—that comes later, always. For some people, later than most.  
  
Now they are older, and they are in Barcelona where everything melts before it has a chance to freeze over. Under the glare of the sun at Parc Güell, Yuri’s shadow spills across the cracked mosaic tile like a war song catching aflame. So, too, his smile, and that fragile humanity he’s kept to himself all these years, a raw sliver finally laid bare for Otabek’s eyes only.   
  
 _Here. It is yours, if you will have it._  
  
Even at their parting, Otabek is not sure if it is his voice, or Yuri’s, that he hears unspoken. He is not sure whose heart it is, in whose hands exactly. All he knows now is that if he planted it in the snow, tulips would bloom, blood-red and tall and strong.


End file.
